Tag: B. Morris Allen

B. Morris Allen’s story “Graven Image” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 7 September 2018. Some stories come all at once, and some come in stages. “Graven Image” was one of the latter. I can’t remember why, but I wanted to write a story about frottage – the technique of creating a design by placing paper over an image and rubbing a colored substance on it – perhaps familiar to some from grave-rubbing. I combined …

It’s about impressions. First impressions, last impressions, the creased and corrugated impressions that life leaves on our skin as it wears us down to our essentials, and eventually to nothing. I know about impressions; I’m in sales now. Back then I was a lonely xenoarchaeologist, chasing down one more faded rumour, one more mystery worn flat by repetition and examination. Study, publish, repeat, as postgrads say, until there’s nothing left to say, no iota of …

B. Morris Allen’s story “A Conversion of Crows” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 1 September 2017. It may not be obvious at first glance, but “A Conversion of Crows” is a story about the rock group Whitesnake. Back in the days when they were good – no really, there was such a time – David Coverdale put out an album called White Snake, which included the song “Whitesnake”. It couldn’t have been any more …

It moved forward in a crawl, jagged angles flowing over soil and stone alike, dawn shaping shadow and sun into beaks and talons that moved relentless toward her boot and over it. With a touch of her finger, the fern curled in on itself, withdrawing crags and fangs into a soft ribbon of green and grey whose silhouette curled round her foot like a friendly snake. “Sawtooth, my ass,” she murmured. “You could cut something …

B. Morris Allen’s story “Chambers of the Heart” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 24 February 2017. I have a very minor heart condition. Confirming its nature required a day wearing a heart monitor, which naturally had me thinking about the heart and its chambers. I wondered what life in those chambers might be like if they were neither biological nor purely metaphorical, but actual physical places. The opening line came quickly after that, and …